Links

A week with a BMW M3

A new version of what the fourth owner of a 320d wants his car to look like.

Day one: The M3 is here. It is black. It looks superb. The seats are red, although for some reason BMW calls this colour ‘Sakhir orange’. They also say that excellent custardy colour you can get on Minis is orange. I’m starting to think BMW doesn’t know what orange means and keeps trying it out on things that aren’t.
Start the M3 from cold and it makes a deep, vigorous noise on the inside. This might be a bit of a cheat. It’s one of those modern cars that plumps up its engine note with artificial sounds played through the stereo. If you stand behind the M3 as it’s warming up, it makes a less pleasant noise, a bit like a bag of chainsaws. The rest of the car feels meaty. The steering is heavy, the power delivery grunty, you feel if you checked under the back bumper you might discover a massive pair of hairy bollocks.

Day two: Give a mate a lift. After 15 minutes or so, apropos of nothing, he declares that the M3 is ‘a bit…’ and then he makes the international hand gesture for ‘bumpy’. He’s right, it is a bit. And that’s with the chassis in comfort mode. I put it into ‘sport plus’ to give an illustration of how it could be even worse. From the driver’s seat, comfort setting isn’t terrible. It doesn’t crash into bumps but nor does it absorb them. It follows the contours of the road in a serious, sporty sort of way. Sometimes two separate parts of the interior in this car creak and chirp under the onslaught. Even so, you could probably live with it. The steering less so. Even in ‘comfort’ it seems needlessly heavy.

Day three: A day of trundling about town. This particular M3 has the double-clutch paddle shift gearbox which works perfectly well in auto mode. The interior is well laid out and comfortable. It’s a car that can do normal things, normally. But it has 425 horsepower and can kick a Boxster in the face for fun.

Day four: A wise man once told me that once the Germans got rid of the of their aristocracy there was no one left to provide refinement and taste-setting, leaving the door open to salmon-coloured sports jackets and Hasselhoff. In other words, you can draw a line directly from the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II to the gold brake callipers on the BMW M3 with optional carbon ceramics. There are other questionable design decisions on this car. I’m not very fond of the exposed carbon fibre roof, for example. And the light-up M badges in the front seats are ghastly. I’m also slightly bothered by the door mirrors which look like they should join the body at the top, but don’t. That said, as whole it’s still a terrific looking thing.

Day five: It’s tipping it down. This is not M3 weather. When it’s damp the traction control light flickers a lot, even if you’re being careful. More so if you’re being not-careful. Part of the problem is that there’s a brief pause and then all the torque seems to arrive in a lump. The old non-turbo, V8 M3 had 414 horsepower and 295 lb ft of torque. The new turbo six cylinder has 425bhp and 406lb ft. The numbers give you some idea of how the engine character has changed. It feels a bit like an AMG Merc without the carefree abandon of total madness.

Day six: It’s still wet. There will be no helmsmithing and heroism today. But that’s okay because I’ll let you into a secret: A few weeks ago I had a go in a different M3 on some utterly fantastic Scottish roads. On the first day it was dry. The M3 was a strange disappointment. Even with the suspension in its hardest setting the whole car lurched about. It felt heavy and uncoordinated, and it was hard to know what it was going to do next, especially since the steering gave previous little clue to what the tyres might be up to. The next day it was damp and the M3 was even less endearing. It felt snappy and unpredictable and not very nice. Really good fast cars encourage you to have fun. The M3 encouraged you to have a go, briefly shart yourself, and then back off. Which, personally, I don’t find very enjoyable.

Day seven: The new series of The Apprentice started this evening. While watching another roster of shit pricks machine gunning Sralan Sugar with bullshit I was filled with a sudden sadness about the BMW. I used to think the M3, especially the saloon, was a car for people who knew their stuff. But I’m a bit worried that it would also appeal to contestants on The Apprentice. In other words, people who think they’re alpha males but are in fact transparently twattish chancers. I hope not.

Goodbye: There’s much to like about the M3. It’s very fast in a straight line, it looks terrific and it feels like a nice object to own. But there’s something that bothers me about it and I think I’ve worked out what it is. This car is a fraud. Cruising gently the ride feels taut and uncompromising yet when you really rag it on a good road, it lollops and lurches about. It sounds bassy and serious from the inside but it’s an artifice, partly played through the stereo speakers, and from the outside it’s nothing like as nice. It boldly wears a carbon fibre roof panel to show how serious it is about weight saving yet one of its failings is it feels like the centre-of-gravity is too high and anyway, if they were that serious about weight saving, why have they put light-up M badges in the seats? It’s hard to escape the feeling that, where once M3s were cars for people who really cared about driving, this is a car set up for people who think they care but will never seek out a nice road and give the car a good airing nor really venture far from town. As such, it’s designed to look, sound and feel superficially hardcore to punters who will never drive it in a hardcore way. Because if you do, it all starts to come apart. As such, it’s hard not to feel that the M in the new M3 stands for ‘marketing’.

The car talked about here is a BMW M3 DCT. It has a 3-litre twin turbo engine making 425 horsepower. BMW says it can go from 0-62 in 4.1 seconds and has a limited top speed of 156mph. Without options, it costs £58,675.

I know a bloke who’s recently bought an M4 and this review had me nodding my head from the first word to the last. The description of the car at the end pretty much sums up everything that would have appealed to him. Almost as hilarious are his recent BMW track day videos – complete with on-screen telemetry – which are pretty much all the hard driving his new car will ever get.

So playing engine noises through the stereo at you is a thing then?
Having virtual reality sounds pumped at you like some arcade game would make me want to cry. Does it also play squealy tyre noises at you if you start cornering too fast, or stream a steady background murmuring of low grade obscenities while stuck in trafic on the high street, to save you winding down the window to hear what people think of you?

A Holden Statesman, aka Chev Caprice, would do. My Dubai rental had a little light that came on at 75, which I had to keep checking for safety purposes. It will be a sad day quite soon, when Ford and GM both stop building RWD bent eights in Oz.

There’s only one thing I didn’t agree with in your report Mr Porter: “it looks terrific”…I think you meant to say “it looks shit” – that bulbous front is a long way from terrific to my eye…..
The V8 M3 sounded the mutts nuts (inside and out) and did not need artifical intervention thru-the-stereo crap.
Still the more-money-than-class sheep will probably que up to buy this façade whilst the less monied-up chavs will be busy working out how to fit illuminating M badges to their naff old 3 series seats.

Generally speaking, it has something to do with your technique of naming and tagging your images that you post and use in your websites.
Therefore, article submission services can assist in enhancing your
online presence. We have come to the conclusion that SEO speciaslist are needed by any company that wants
to explore the aspect of online marketing.

Despite being a very suitable family, the new Fusion offers a sporty
appearance and a zestful drive. Look for recalls, consumer reviews, and pricing
information. Additional features include vehicle stability control and traction control.

We’re a group of volunteers and opening a new scheme in our community.
Your website offered us with valuable info to work on. You’ve done a formidable
job and our entire community will be thankful
to you.

I don’t know if it’s just me or if everyone else encountering
issues with your site. It appears as though some of the text in your content are running off the screen. Can someone else please provide
feedback and let me know if this is happening to them as well?
This might be a problem with my internet browser because I’ve had
this happen previously. Many thanks

About The – Author: Harris – Noah is an expert author on pet
products related topics and currently workingfor.

In other words, structures would be designed or modified to collect
the natural rainfall that falls onto the property, purify it
and then store it in cisterns until the water is needed by
the occupants of the building. Experience the difference an experienced,
reliable home theater setup company makes.

The fact is that nowadays there are hundreds if not thousands of different types of dog
supplements and treats that you can buy today. Sometimes eating of bad calories result in making
the dieter overweight which is really a matter of
concern because it directly targets the working efficiency of its user.
To attain this level in the blood, most people must supplement with an additional 4000 to
5000 IU of vitamin D3.